Yush indeed. Just nosh 'em.
Further north I would actually predict them the geography to be more favourable for the species as an entity.
P.cyanescens is a cryophile species, and likes the cold, fruits much later often as not than can P.semilanceata. Cyans like the cold, and the further north the colder it gets.
It favours alder tree wood especially if growing it, although wood mulch I've seen it on plenty times. I find cyans to be fucking strong buggers, very high psilocin content however compared to psilocybin, they don't store all that well because psilocin is more unstable than its corresponding phosphorylated, ester derivative (I.e psilocybin)
Fresh or freshly dried without strong heat, such as strung up on thread over the grill oven hot air vent with the extractor fan on to draw an air current. Or on newspaper sheets. Spore print them first, and discard any without a violaceous black, ESPECIALLY any odd'uns with rusty brown spore prints, these could be Galerina species, a lot of that family contain amatoxin, a handful, weight for weight contain more amatoxins than the death cap (Amanita phalloides) one or two may not kill, the individual mushrooms contain less on a per mushroom fruitbody basis.
But its a slow acting protoplasmic poison (cytotoxic, affecting cellular protein sythesis [via inhibition of RNA polymerase type II, especially liver and to a lesser extent the kidneys.
Theres a characteristic slow action, as cellular protein reserves already present are utilized, then inhibition of further synthesis leads to loss of actin (with which amatoxins also bind directly and they have been conjugated to fluorophores and used to label the actin of the cytoskeletal architechture specifically as fluorescent, excitable probes for fluorescense microscopy)
Characteristic 8-12 hour delay before severe symptom onset, initially severe, severe gastroenteritis, agonizing stomach pain, very profuse, severe diarrhea, possibly watery like the rice water stool of cholera infection, after the faecal matter present in the GI tract has been voided, vomiting, then a lull and seeming remission during which the initial GI phase ceases or becomes less pronounced, this period is sometimes asymptomatic leading a patient to believe or physicians to believe the worst is over. It is not. Protein synthesis ceasing, cells collapse and die in the liver leading to fulminant liver failure with hepatic necrosis. Can affect kidneys also but the liver is the primary target organ, then decompensation and degeneration to frank liver failure, leading to death in between a few days to a week, or week and a bit. Very, very unpleasant, slow and excruciating way to die. Seek medical assistance immediately, explaining potential amatoxin poisoning as aetiology to the medics. This can save lives, even sometimes with extensive treatment avoid the need for a liver transplant. Delay ye not if amatoxin poisoning or ingestion of such brown sprinted (it really does look rusty when they are printed on foil, after having the caps severed from the stalks, and the two lined up in pairs so one knows what stalk came from which mushroom, and kept gills down on the foil overnight.
With cyans, making tea is likely more inefficient than usual, psilocin being less stable. The ratio of psilocin to psilocybin is quite high, which is the reason for their relatively poor storage dried. But they are potent as hell fresh or just after printing, when first dried carefully. But print and fresh if you have only a few and don't need to store.
And I do indeed mean the NW. If they are about, if I see any I should be truly thankful, for then I could obtain me a few spore prints, And with those, prepare cultures and obtain many many many more mushrooms. Found pounds of them once or twice, got really lucky there, and when taking them home, two people (in total), myself included, starting tripping balls and we had not consumed, between us so much as a single lonesome mushroom. We'd gone to macdonalds and found them on a woodchip bed, well I had, the fucking borderline (I now know) bitch from hell former housemate, and had to get a bunch of happymeal boxes (empty) begged for free to take our harvest home after I spotted one, late in the dark of the evening and made an on the spot assessment and field identification as their being Psilocybe cyanescens.
After some rains, or at least they were quite damp, we spent severan hours hand cleaning them, and enough psilocybin/psilocin leached into our fingers for us both to be BUZZING BUZZING BUZZZzzzzzzIIIIInnggG!. We both noticed we were feeling strange and otherworldly at first, an electricity of a kind, flowing through my nervous system. Not threatening, or overloading, just an electricity, a charge, rushing through the veins, not tense but easygoing at the same time, my eyes feeling as though vision was 'wet' and sparkly:D
Clean on we did, though, and our eyes, the pupils had blown up like dinnerplates, we were both feeling especially good, euphoric, rapidly chattering back and forth in ASL sign language, with me it was although my thoughts were racing, very clear and not in a hypomanic way like with psychostimulants, just, processing being especially rapid and the thoughts in my CPU perfectly, and at peak efficacy, whilst we simply seemed as though to need bandwidth greater than the connection to vocal cords neurologically speaking so as to legislate the requirement for the employment of our hands to speak with each other in simultaneous coocurrence with our voices. My and probably hers too, CNS-a-twanging like a guitar, perhaps the A string, not thin and high frequency, HF yes, but a medium kind of thickness, not thready, overlaid with a subtle big, heavy, reverberant deep bass thrum.
I've seen the Galerinas (not ID'ed to species level but to genus, could of course also have been Kuhneromyces mutabilis, a harmless but very very close lookalike of the deadly galerinas, fruit in the same patch as did Cyanescens. So spore print and weed any nasty rusty brown rather than violet-black printers.
But yes, cyanescens is a powerful, powerful species. The UK strain and the US 'Astoria Ossip strain both, its closely related to Psilocyne azurescens, which is with perhaps P.baeocystis probably the most potent amongst the genus Psilocybe. I've had the equivalent of a few dried grams in wet weight blow me down so hard, and so quickly that I barely could tell my surroundings, due to the astounding intensity provoked. Simply handling that harvest damp was enough for us both to absorb sufficient psilocin/psilocybin to start properly tripping. I was at least a plus 2.1/4-2.5 from inadvertent transdermal absorption alone. Powerful, possessed of great, great power even in subtlety, although with internal dosing they are anything but subtle in their level of efficacy.
